Next week the ACC will be having their Spring Meetings in Amelia Island Florida. The well respected ACC writer David Teel of the Newport News says one of the topics that should be discussed the Spring Meetings is a tweaking of the Divisional Alignments. I think Divisional Alignment and scheduling should always be a topic of discussion when the leaders of the ACC schools get together.
That said moving teams around to try and manufacture quality match ups is a dangerous proposition. I’ve mentioned before on this blog, the ACC did this once before with disastrous results. When the ACC first expanded in during the mid 2000s, Florida State and Miami were put in different divisions. The first ACC Championship Games were set in Florida in hopes of epic FSU vs Miami championship games that never happened. Both football programs went into tailspin with Miami still trying to recover.
The Florida locations were too far away from other the ACC Fansbases creating poorly attended games that were national punchlines all in hopes of those FSU / Miami games.
Rather than tweak the divisions by moving teams, the ACC needs to be looking at how to get programs play each other more often. You can eliminate the permanent crossover opponent, or reduce the frequency of how often permanent cross-over partners play. Possibly bring the discussion up again of 9 conference games. That’s what I’d like to see discussed. Don’t simply move teams here and there. That time has passed. Either leave it the way it is, or overhaul it completely. The Divisionless solution is something I can get behind, but there doesn’t seem to be much support for that by the individual schools.
In addition the other topic, I want discussed at the Spring Meeting is the ACC Network. It would be beneficial if John Swofford made some more definitive statements on the network. I think everyone understands the process is far from complete, but if the network is still a go which I believe it is then provide an update. It’s good PR for the conference to put a positive report out there.
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